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Speed
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Motives of the Motion Picture Industry
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David Neumann is a gifted physical comic with a persona of a Chaplinesque squirt who finds himself in manner of peculiar situations in "Don't Just Do Something, Stand There," presented on Sunday night at Performance Space 122. Mr. Neumann is also an impressive actor who creates dance and theater pieces rich with ideas and commitment. What he needs now, however, is a director. The program opened with "Dose," a pair of solos in which Mr. Neumann was seen first as a man attempting to make himself breakfast through a fog of drugs and then, less believably, as an agile street-corner huckster. The evening closed with "Appropriate Behavior," a suite of dance and theater vignettes in which Mr. Neumann played an initially timid middle-class white man who hangs out with hip pals and learns to be cool. His teachers were Archie Burnett and Brahms LaFortune, two black club dancers who are also extraordinarily charismatic actors. Mr. Neumann's endearing stage persona acted here as a lightning rod for the others, both drawing and neutralizing their energy. Moment after moment took fire and then fizzled. Interestingly enough, the program's best -realized piece, "Adirondack (A Radio Play)," was a group work for nine dancers who did not include Mr. Neumann. "Adirondack" was also the most ambitious piece, inspired apparently by radio broadcasts of Adirondack Red Wings hockey games. There was sometimes a strangely desultory look to the movement and formations. But the worlds of sports, broadcasting and covertly nonconforming small-town behavior collided, skirmished and exploded with vitality on-stage. The piece was performed with knowing abandon by Gregory M. Catellier, John Heginbotham, Matthew Heyner, Krista Miller, Fritha Pengelly, Adrienne Truscott, Nami Yamamoto, the deliciously sardonic Robert Cucuzza and Clare Byrne. Ms. Byrne is quietly becoming a major presence in downtown dance, a deceptive wren who only gradually reveals her witty physicality. Paul Clay designed the evening's atmospheric lighting. |
"Surviving
Today" The setup oozes clichés of racial snobbery: a skinny little white guy stands between the two bigger, looser blacks. Their quizzical grins assess his polite introductory handshake. Does he want to be cool? You bet your ass. But there's a load of irony in Appropriate Behavior and a sweet story that blasts racial stereotypes. And David Neumann is a mean man with hip-hop moves. Too fast for the eye to hold and yet precise in fluidity, his lean body rearranges itself in countless suave attitudes. Forget joints; he bends everywhere. Appropriate Behavior was in collaboration with fabulous club dancers Archie Burnett and Brahms (Bravo) LaFortune. The suspicious black guys, the overeager white one–that was a ruse. The premise is that the three are buddies-in-dance, kids whose moms push homework in vain. Now Burnett plays Neumann's mother ("Stop doing the Robot while l'm talking to you!"); now Neumann slips into a Haitian accent to bawl out Burnett. LaFortune rolls his eyes: his daddy makes him dance. The "boys" practice, eyes on the TV, or become mirrors for one another, having so much fun that their irresistible. Black? White? These men borrowed, stole, and own this dancing (deep-down sources range from Ashanti to Astaire). And, of course, they show their skill: LaFortune doing speed-of-light salsa using a friend's immobile arms to spin under and snake around; Burnett flashing his hands and hips like knives and vogueing down some runway; all of them jamming until the roof about falls in. In Neumann's opening antihero solo, Dose, before he puts on a hat and breaks into dancing, he can't get his limbs to work in concert. Gazes endlessly at a TV in a cereal box. Wants some cereal. Lurches off to find some. Staggers back. Box empty. Much later, after some misadventures that include watching cereal boxes walk, he dumps a whole box of Shredded Wheat biscuits into his bowl. They look like turds. Neumann uses the off-kilter moves of hip-hop, as well as the suggestion of missed connections or a machine gone awry, to bring out oddities in contemporary life. Adirondack is, you gradually realize, a hockey game. Except that nothing is straightforward. One of the players (John Heginbotham) wears a pink satin skirt, and his color-coordinated partner Adrienne Truscott keeps hauling him to the bench. Players hold up fingers, pinch one another, or make dodgy, unfinished moves, eyeing everybody suspiciously, Nami Yamamoto races over to tall, skinny Matthew Heyner, hoists him straight up, and holds him there awhile. Upside-down flowering plants, some of them alarmingly large, overhang the scene. Announcer Robert Cucuzza is frequently overcome by shyness or Clare Byrne's caresses. Anyway, the "game" is never exactly in sync with him or the taped commentator or the soupy music. By the end, everyone's going for the throat–it's a wonder they (including Fritha Pengelly, Krista Miller, and Gregory M. Catellier) can still move. Neumann named his concert for Doris Humphreys dictum, "Don't Just Do Something, Stand There." He could stand learning another: "All dances are too long" When he does, he'll prosper. |
